For many people, summer means days spent at idyllic beaches that stretch along the coastline of the American South. But as historian Andrew W. Kahrl writes, Americans haven’t always seen southern coasts as attractive places.
At the start of the twentieth century, Kahrl writes, shorelines were the South’s “most forsaken and forgotten lands.” They were unsuited to most agricultural purposes, prone to violent storms, and covered in forests where dangerous animals lived. But developers were beginning to see the promise in creating seaside getaways.
One barrier standing in their way was Black farmers, many of whom had been relegated to the less-fertile land near the ocean. By the 1920s, nightriders were burning Black-owned homes across the coastal South and warning African Americans to sell their land. Local jumps in real estate values were accompanied by increased racial terrorism.